


The Long Way

by pettiot



Series: Professionals Timeline [14]
Category: The Professionals (TV 1977)
Genre: M/M, ennui
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-07
Updated: 2011-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:00:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22240699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pettiot/pseuds/pettiot
Summary: Bodie loses his nerve.  Or something.
Relationships: Bodie/OMC
Series: Professionals Timeline [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1600894





	The Long Way

  


He sat in a bar drinking mojitos with the washed up pilot of a 747.

The rum wasn't bad. The sun was long gone, blackness of ocean pinpricked by the low-lying lights of the city opposite, uplit palm trees framing everything in shades of cliché. The lime was sweet. The job was a day away, and for once it looked like an easy hit. Clean in, clean out of the capital, the bodyguards were a joke even on paper, and wouldn't his bosses be pleased. But for now Bodie was sitting in a bar drinking mojitos with the pilot of a 747, mind carefully blank, not even daring to think about the coiling energy, the want to simply _spill_. The anticipation was the best.

'But not for years.' The pilot looked into his glass and sighed, morose.

Looking away, Bodie let his focus blur, the city lights a ranging streak of colour. He crunched his ice. For the life of him, he couldn't remember what they'd been talking about, except it'd been boring him.

'Yes? '

The pilot shrugged. 'So what do you do?'

That's right, exchanging pleasantries.

The game irritated him lately, habitat no longer his natural domain. He didn't live behind a desk, a counter, a gate, with the rest of humanity. He never got close enough to measure who was sincere or not, didn't bloody ask for sincerity to begin with. Why did they keep trying?

'Army.'

The pilot was greying in a way which had looked a lot classier earlier this evening. Bland features tugged ever further groundwards by their string of mojitos, he looked increasingly wasted.

'Oh, yeah? Must be interesting.'

Not the time or place to talk. Bodie gave up. Maybe Mr Pilot was bored with the game too. 'I get to see a lot of places.'

'I used to, too.'

'So you've seen it all, huh?' Said in a particular tone of voice.

The pilot leaned against the back of his bar stool, shifted his weight, and at last seemed to come alight. 'Most of it.'

'The hotel rooms are much the same world wide, I always found.'

'Mmm. They are, aren't they?'

'Yours, mine. You know. We could compare.'

The pilot smiled. 'Yours, I think.'

It was that easy. Maybe the mojitos hadn't even been necessary.

The pilot was also particular about his fitness, easily read from his posture and form in the bar, and it paid off. A long, long shower afterwards. Prompted by mild embarrassment, Bodie would leave an exceptionally big tip for the cleaners.

Good or not, it did nothing for Bodie's tension. A few hours killed. Out to kill another man. Apparently it would save many lives, or he wouldn't have been sent out: he had personal faith in his overlord even if faith in his government was somewhat more vague. Absolutely nowhere on record was he a sanctioned British officer, and it still felt odd, these years after CI5, knowing if he was caught there was no way out. A permanent Susie. The first time around with the SAS there had been a way out: name, rank, number. Rely on the Red Cross, Amnesty International, whatever. Now he had no name, rank or number, but it was still the same job. Albeit the setting changed, more city than bush.

'Liam.'

Bodie took a moment to remember having given the name, then he turned from the mirror, cutthroat lowered, smiled over his shoulder.

The pilot fingered the lapels of Bodie's suit, hung out of reach of the bed. 'I thought you were joking, about the army. Look too good in a suit. But,' another gesture, taking in the ruins of the bed, Bodie himself, a grin suddenly splitting the pilot's tired face, 'yeah, I'd believe it.'

'No real reason to lie.' No, not really. But he'd lied anyway.

'How do you keep it up?' They both laughed. 'I mean, the army business. I couldn't do it.'

'Oh, you get used to it. Just like any job, I suppose. It must be like that as a pilot, too, getting used the shifts, always being moved on. But yo u'd get your friends, talk about flying all the time, it becomes a part of you—'

The pilot was shaking his head. 'No, I meant. I suppose it's not really the place to talk about it, but I'd never met career military before, and you're, well, older than me, aren't you? And I'm not young. I meant the killing. The way your life is always at risk.'

What to say to that? 'Too old for the frontline, for sure. But it's not all killing, even there. Put it another way, half the time it's actually saving somebody. Anyway, you get used to it. Get used to anything if you stick it long enough.'

'I couldn't.' Very quietly.

Bodie set down the cutthroat and buried his face in steaming washcloth.

'It went off about an hour before we were due to land,' the pilot said. 'First you don't believe it, but then your training kicks in, you know?'

'Yeah, I know.' Muffled.

'Autopilot,' said the pilot, and laughed gaily. 'I brought us down in a field. I saved two hundred and seventy people on a plane from certain death. I got a medal for it somewhere. I kept flying for about three, four years after. I think I was in shock that whole time. Disassociation, the psychs call it nowadays. I was fearless, high. Everything was abstract, nothing real could touch me, not my kids, my wife... I'd saved two hundred and seventy people from certain death. Then one day the bubble just burst. Coming in to land, I'm staring at the runway and just think to myself _why?_ Why the hell am I doing this?'

'Well, it was your job, I suppose. Anyone gets satisfaction out of doing what they're trained to do.'

'My job?' The pilot sounded tired. 'How was I ever going to top saving two hundred and seventy people? That was it. My peak. Anything else was a letdown. There were times I'd find myself fantasising about how I could've done it better. How I could've done it worse. How I could set it up now to— There's a point where you just have to say it's gone too far. What am I getting out of this? Enough's enough.'

'You lost your nerve. I've seen it happen—'

'No,' said the pilot. 'No, not my nerve. I rather think I woke up.'

'Was it worth it?' Bodie grinned.

'Huh?'

'Well, if you woke up to this. Sordid hotel rooms and mojitos at dusk.'

'It's not all that bad,' the pilot admitted. A slow, rising grin. 'Leastaways when someone else is doing the buying. Something the wife never did.'

Bodie opened his mouth, then closed it again. Maybe it wasn't them, maybe it was him. He was offered sincerity time and time again, always to turn back with a joke. For a moment he felt sad and very tired, pained by the hot night, the tiny insects in the air, the tropical swollen moon lurking behind thin curtains, all his anticipation suddenly gone, body feeling nothing more than rubbed too hard the wrong way, as worn and dated as shagpile.

At about nine am, Bodie put on the suit and a hat with distaste, caught a ferry across, and, sweating lightly, blended with rest of the expo's disparate crowd. Just another middle aged man, bland enough with his unmemorable features, unremarkable height, unremarkable suitcase. He passed through the convention centre's security easily enough. He planted the gun three weeks ago, before the security contingent moved in, and collected it on his way to the roof.

There, across the internal courtyard, his mark stepped out onto the balcony for a smoke. In this heat! His personal security was ridiculously lax. That's what happened when you hired amateurs, Bodie supposed, a crew of young, fresh out of the jungle mercenaries trying to add a bit of legitimacy to their butcher's CV. Why even bother—

His swallow caught in his throat.

The mark flicked his cigarette butt over the balustrade, watched with interest as it spiralled to the court below, the nape of his neck bared without the turban. Dark hair curled like ink against that nape. He cradled a glass of scotch in his free hand. Hypocrisy not limited to the English, after all.

Bodie's hands were not shaking: funny, but he'd thought they would, when this happened. No, he was as steady as ever, dismantling the gun with clear and unremarkable thought. Below him, the mark drained his scotch and flicked ice into the void. Bodie changed hotels, waited two days and sold his paraphernalia for enough money to disappear for a while: no one could vanish a gun like a gun dealer. He fully intended to get back home, and he didn't know any other way to do this but run.

His heart thundered for a week, as if racing to catch up.


End file.
